Национальный корпус гражданских общественных работ: современная версия "Гражданского корпуса охраны природы"

The National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC), or AmeriCorps NCCC, is an AmeriCorps program founded in 1993 that engages 18 to 26 year olds in team based, residential community service projects across the United States. Each year, approximately 2,200 individuals representative of all colors, creeds, states, and economic statuses are chosen to serve in one of four regions covering all 50 states and five territories. The mission of AmeriCorps NCCC is "to strengthen communities and develop leaders through direct, team based national and community service." Each year, NCCC members complete a total of over 1.2 million hours of service across hundreds of projects in the areas of disaster response, infrastructure improvement, environmental conservation, energy conservation, and urban and rural development.

The National Civilian Community Corps is loosely based on the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a New Deal era work relief program founded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to employ young men left jobless by the Great Depression. Run by officers of the United States Army Reserve, the CCC employed three million men aged 18 to 26 across tens of thousands of projects related to environmental conservation and natural resource development. By the time the program was discontinued in 1942, CCC members had planted more than 3 billion trees, built nearly 100,000 miles of fire roads, and erected drainage systems for over 80 million acres of agricultural land. In the early 1990s, the end of the Cold War sparked renewed interest in volunteerism and in the idea of using surplus military resources to solve domestic problems. In 1992, a bipartisan group of senators including John McCain, Harris Wofford, Bob Dole, and Barbara Mikulski inserted provisions into the National Defense Authorization Act of 1993 authorizing the creation of a “Civilian Community Corps Demonstration Program” to test the viability of resurrecting the CCC model as a response to contemporary problems. The following year, President Bill Clinton signed legislation creating the Corporation for National and Community Service (also known as AmeriCorps), which absorbed the nascent Corps as well as other pre existing programs such as VISTA. Like its New Deal era forerunner, the new program was closely linked to the military: it was administered by a staff of officers recommended by the Secretary of Defense, and Corps units were trained and housed at campuses owned by the Department of Defense. The original five campuses were located in San Diego, California; Charleston, South Carolina; Denver, Colorado; Perry Point, Maryland; and Washington, D. C. Each campus served as headquarters for a region covering multiple states. Between 1994 and 1999, more than 20,000 individuals applied to serve with NCCC, but only 6,000 were accepted due to budget constraints. Over the course of a typical program year, NCCC teams would complete between 300 and 400 projects focused on “environmental activities, education, human needs, and disaster response.” A majority of projects would be sponsored by nonprofit organizations, roughly a quarter by federal, state, and local government entities, and the rest by educational organizations and other institutions fitting the NCCC mandate. Frequent sponsoring organizations included Habitat for Humanity, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, YMCA, and The Nature Conservancy. Over the following four years, more than 4,000 NCCC members would serve on relief and recovery projects throughout the impacted region. In 2006, then President George W. Bush proposed a federal budget which would have eliminated NCCC, but the proposal was ultimately not adopted. A new campus opened in Vinton, Iowa the following year, by which point the Washington, D. C. campus had also closed down and the San Diego campus had relocated to Sacramento. In 2009, the newest NCCC campus was opened in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Disaster relief remains a significant priority for NCCC. Teams have been deployed in response to events such as Hurricane Sandy and the 2011 Joplin tornado, and between 2012 and 2019, half of all projects involved disaster services. In 2012, NCCC launched an official partnership with FEMA that led to the creation of FEMA Corps, which adapts the NCCC model to concentrate exclusively on disaster relief efforts. FEMA Corps members “are dedicated to FEMA deployments in areas of logistics, disaster survivor assistance, individual and public assistance, and recovery.”

In 2023, NCCC announced a new “Summer of Service” program which allows members to serve for three months rather than a full ten. Later that year, as part of President Biden’s Climate Corps initiative, NCCC struck an arrangement with the U. S. Forest Service to create Forest Corps. Beginning in the summer of 2024, Forest Corps teams will assist the Forest Service in conducting conservation projects such as fuels reduction, trail maintenance, prescribed burns, and wildlife surveys.

AmeriCorps NCCC is divided into four regions, each covering multiple states and territories. These include the Pacific Region, headquartered in Sacramento and covering most of the Far West, Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, and American Samoa; the Southwest Region, headquartered in Aurora, Colorado and covering several of the West South Central states as well as Arizona, Colorado, and Wyoming; the North Central region, headquartered in Vinton, Iowa and covering the Midwest, Pennsylvania, New York, and northern New England; and the Southern Region, headquartered in Vicksburg, Mississippi and covering the Southeast as well as New Jersey, southern New England, Puerto Rico, and the U. S. Virgin Islands. The regions operate with considerable autonomy, recruiting their own members and selecting their own projects. To ensure that teams are available year round, regions operate on staggered, ten month cycles. Each region is assigned a season (Summer, Fall, or Winter) that fluctuates based on need. In 2024, both the Southwest and North Central regions will receive summer recruits. The term is divided into three or four service rounds lasting from seven to fourteen weeks; each round typically corresponds to one project, although some teams may split the round between two or more projects. Individuals apply to serve either as Corps Members or Team Leaders.